This is how we made money with Garage Sales.

When I was at my peak, buying 7-10 storage units per week, I had so much merchandise that I had sell it quickly. My employees and I would fill up two 26 U-Haul trucks per week and then have a gigantic garage sale in a car lot that I rented on Saturdays. I got great exposure being on a major road and we had about 800-1000 people stopping by every Saturday. With this many people picking through your merchandise, you will move a lot of items that you otherwise couldn't sell. But surprisingly, we still had a ton of stuff left over at the end of the day.

At first, we placed an add on Craigslist under the free section to get rid the leftovers. This became a problem because a lot of people usually showed up and they really made a mess. They would take all of the good stuff and leave other stuff scattered everywhere. I got tired of this and decided to donate all leftover items to local charities, which helps out the less fortunate people and it is a great tax deduction.

That's a pretty good idea. In my town they have this great outdoor yard sale type thing I believe its for charity but attracts a huge crowd. I guess if you have a space to do something similar privately I think its a great idea.

Movieman, why you got an ax to grind and have to make comments about anyone industrious enough to find other avenues of making money in addition to strictly buying units now that the game has changed a little?

You make some smart ass comment about how I sell lists in a post the other day and your knocking this guy as well. Don't be a hater.

That's a pretty good idea. In my town they have this great outdoor yard sale type thing I believe its for charity but attracts a huge crowd. I guess if you have a space to do something similar privately I think its a great idea.

Movieman, why you got an ax to grind and have to make comments about anyone industrious enough to find other avenues of making money in addition to strictly buying units now that the game has changed a little?

You make some smart ass comment about how I sell lists in a post the other day and your knocking this guy as well. Don't be a hater.

You can consider my remarks (in this post or any other) in any way you like. My question here is how many he is buying now. It's fine that he is conducting a list business. Probably being successful at it given the new interest in auctions.

As regards your comment about a comment I made about YOUR list selling business, I will simply respond that It SEEMS OUT OF LINE in this thread....that's what YOU said about something I posted MISTAKENLY in another thread.

Is that enough refereces to this thread or that ? You needn't respond, it would be off topic.

I hope this has been informative. If you are looking for storage auction information & you live in the greater Houston and surrounding areas I encourage you to visit our website http://www.houstonstorageauctions.com/ .

TC, that's awesome your on here. I've been subscribing to your www.dallasstorageauctions.com website for a while now. Great stuff. I definitely respect your knowledge... you've helped me make money for sure!

Well that's definately one way to get rid of items in a hurry. In my opinion probably not the ideal filtering system. You have little time invested, but I can imagine the overhead involved--people you have working the sale with you, would eat up a lot of the profits you might make. Plus, if you rent 2 trucks, that's probably a few hundred right there.

In my filtering system I would run those items through an online auction first. They would make more money than a yard sale and you wouldn't have to tie up your money/time with other resources.

Donating is a great idea, but there is a cap and it's not hard to reach. After you reach it it only accounts for a certain percentage towards your income if you are doing itemized deductions--a lot of people find they do better with the standard deduction. Not that people only donate for the tax write off. There is a common misnomer that people will be able to write off a huge amount at the end of the year when that's not entirely true.

I like your idea of thinking big, even if in these times (with storage units going for inflated prices)it might be extremely hard to do. I hate to say it, but if you want to be successful in this business you have to diversify. You can longer count on one source for your product or one avenue to sell product.